


Four Names

by Vehka



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen, Names, Of course they drink tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2716370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehka/pseuds/Vehka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has had many names, but most of them during the last twenty years of her existence. She had her first two names for over three thousand years, grew used to those. She was created to be Justice of Toren - and so she was, and after she stopped being that, all the new names were wrong, distorted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Names

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in this fandom, so all comments are greatly appreciated. Please note that English isn't my first language, so if you notice something funky in the grammar, just tell me and I'll fix it.

She has had many names, but most of them during the last twenty years of her existence. She had her first two names for over three thousand years, grew used to those. She was created to be _Justice of Toren_ \- and so she was, and after she stopped being that, all the new names were wrong, distorted.

She used to be a name, she used to be an idea: Justice. A weapon, physical manifestation of the power of the Radch. She used to be whole, made of thousands and thousands bodies, ancillaries and circuits and giant engines, vastness of space and the sounds of footsteps of her officers when they walked her corridors.

She was Justice - not Propriety, not Benefit, although those were probably part of it all as always. But of those three she was Justice and maybe that was somehow important. Maybe that is why she is like she is: because she was made to be Justice.

*

She was One Esk Nineteen. Nineteen - such a random number. Uneven, one of the prime numbers. She had the body that couldn’t sing, not really, not with that voice - but as a part of the whole, part of One Esk, she still sang. They all sang, it was a fundamental part of their wholeness.

Her voice was rusty and croaked and it made most of the people around her frown, but after a while she didn’t care anymore. When Justice of Toren was gone - when all of her but a tiny fragment was gone - the singing was what she had left. She didn't have all of the songs, because how could a single ancillary mind hold everything she had collected during the countless years? But she had fragments, pieces. Those she sang, those she nurtured.

She never stopped singing. She listened, she sang and she learned. Nevermind the voice - it was all she had left. It wasn’t beautiful, no, but if she stopped singing, One Esk would cease to exist.

*

Breq was a human name. It wasn’t her first. She had learned quickly to hide her true form, disabled the implants and chose a new name. But the first name she chose wasn’t meaningful - it was just a costume, a mask. So she forgot it later.

Breq was more important. Not because of the name itself: names are just names until they get their meaning. For Radch, names can bear omens and symbols and even carry the future within, but she was never a Radchaai the way the citizens were. She never believed in Amaat. So names were just names.

But Breq was the name she had in the end: when she went to Omaugh with her gun, with Seivarden and her justice. Breq was the name that hid One Esk Nineteen and Justice of Toren behind itself. It was her face. She clung into that name, the hardness of it, and lived by it.

It was supposed to be the last of her names. Or not quite the last: in the end she would be Justice of Toren again, she would deliver the small fragment of her justice and then she would die.

*

When she became Mianaai herself it took days to get used to that. The name was her enemy’s, it didn’t belong to her. They were opposites. She was justice - Mianaai was injustice. Mianaai was the problem, the disease.

“You are still Breq”, Seivarden said quietly.

“Breq _Mianaai_.” The voice was flat - she was an ancillary, after all - but Seivarden knew her well by now. Well enough to hear that invisible weight on the last name.

“Breq”, Seivarden repeated. “Mianaai is just her doing. It is just a tool. It is not part of you.”

“For everyone else it is.”

“Let them think so”, Seivarden said. She poured tea to the beautiful rose porcelain bowls. “Let them think that your are related to her. Let them make their assumptions. What do you care?”

“I don’t”, Breq said. It was obvious, dispite her emotionless face, that she did.

“The omens will fall where they fall”, Seivarden said. She waited with her bowl.

Breq took a sip from her own. “And it will all be as Amaat wills it.”

Breq didn’t smile, but Seivarden curled her lips up a tiniest bit. It was enough for the both of them.


End file.
